StumbleUpon.com just doesn’t get me any traffic.  StumbleUpon.com is a waste of time.

If you’ve heard these complaints or have made them yourself, this article is definitely for you.  I’ve been a “Member since Aug 06, 2007“and StumbleUpon.com (SU) has treated me really well. Here are a five specific keys to getting traffic with SU:

1. Make friends with SU users who aren’t new to the SU scene.  Find top stumblers who like things you like and add them to your subscriber list.  Don’t just add all the top stumblers – see what they have in their favorites, compare it to what you plan to favorite, and make sure it’s a fairly reasonable “good fit”.
2. Next Step: Get to know these people! How? – stumble posts they create, discover their stuff.  BUT, don’t SPAM them.  If I was a top stumbler and I got a ton of friend requests from newbies, I’d probably just ignore them until they got their feet wet a bit.  StumbleUpon recently added this new function too, which makes it even easier to see how close you “match up” with other Stumblers:



3. Socialize! This is what SU and all the other “social networks” are all about – socializing! Once you add friends with common interests, don’t be afraid to chat with them, send them a message via the SU message box, (here’s a quick view of the “Send a message” box)

   

   ask them to Thumb Up and review something, etc.  You’ll get no’s, ignored, and once in a great while one of them will actually do something to help you.  This will probably happen more than you expect if you’re persistent and personalize your message.

4. Don’t just book mark your own stuff! I know, to most of you this is a “no-brainer” but come on – if you just add your own stuff you will be tagged as a first class SPAMMER! Besides that, the “important” SUers will ignore everything you do and you may get banned from SU.  To avoid this beginners mistake, find stuff you like that’s related to your website and add it to your favorites: become a part of your industries community!  If you don’t know where to look, go to the SU search bar in the top right corner of the SU screen and type in one of the keywords that relates to your industry.

   

   Don’t be too specific in your keyword search, and you’ll find other sites that will actually provide you with great stuff you can write about for your own blog.

5. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!” Yep, that’s right, if you don’t have a social media marketing plan of attack, you’ll waste a lot of time and, just as the complaints at the top of this post say, SU (or any other social media site) won’t do anything for you.

If, after you implement this advice, you are still echoing the same sentiments found at the top of this post, you probably haven’t put each step in to practice fully 🙂  Happy Stumbling!

UPDATE!The Power of stumbleupon links.  Out of curiosity, I decided to check on my placement for the keyword phrase “Stumbleupon strategies”.  To my surprise, out of 1,430,000 websites, this article is number 7.  Here’s the proof!

MollerMarketing.com is coming up on it’s 2 year anniversary.  I actually started on Blogger.com and then transferred everything over to the blessed WordPress!  It’s been a fun ride so far, I’ve learned a lot, and have appreciated all the comments, questions, and “Success Stories” I’ve seen.

One of my favorite blogs talks about taking your blog traffic to the next level.  I want MollerMarketing.com to be a source people talk about with their friends and a source people refer others to for information about starting an online business.  As I read other blogs, one of the recommendations I’ve received is to ask readers what they’d like to read more about and then “deliver plus one”!

I’ve decided to put that suggestion in to practice! Please fill out the new survey, brought to you by this cool wp polls plugin:

(You can select up to three topics)

[poll id=”2″]

Thanks for your feedback.  If you are interested in doing a guest blog post, contact Moller Marketing today at mollermarketing @ gmail dot com!

Twitter is all about new age word of mouth networking! BlogWorld Expo 2008 has really opened my mind to the possibilities for networking effectively with Twitter.

If you haven’t used twitter yet, I recommend you get started today! Follow me at MollerMarketing Twitter.

Yes, this is “self promotion” 🙂  I thought I’d share a little more about who I am, thanks to a Prosper Employee Spotlight:

Employee Spotlight

Meet Nate Moller, the eCommerce Coaching Division Leader at the Coaching Office of Prosper, Inc.

What is your role at Prosper?

I’m the eCommerce Division Leader

How long have you worked at Prosper?

4 years exactly

Where are you from?

Rupert, Idaho originally, but I live in Spanish Fork now

Tell us about your family.

I’m married to my best friend, Becky. We have two kids: Caleb (3) and Madison (1).

What are your hobbies and interests?

Clogging! I have a website called www.ClogOn.com, which I started as a Prosper student/employee. I also love sports — especially baseball, softball, soccer, golf, and tennis. Camping, hiking, sailing, fishing, and traveling are great, too. And, of course, I love online marketing and SALES!

What is your favorite book?

Hmm…if I say The One Minute Entrepreneur will I get points? I do really like that book. I also like How to Win Friends and Influence People.

What is one of your life ambitions?

To go to Yankee Stadium to see a game in the historic stadium, which I got to do for my recent birthday! My wife ROCKS!

What is something that most people don’t know about you?

That I’m a clogger (although now many people know).  I’ve clogged since I was 6 and have been all over the world clogging.

What was your first job?

Rolling hay bails into straight lines on our farm in Idaho.

Who is your hero?

I don’t really have one specific one. I love studying about and asking questions of successful entrepreneurs and business owners.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Reading people’s minds! As a sales guy, this would have helped a ton! As a manager, it would help too. But most of all, it would help me as a husband! Most of the time, I think I know what’s going on, but every once in awhile I’m WAY off when it comes to reading my wife’s mind.

If you haven’t taken the big plunge and adapted effective keyword research strategies to your online marketing plan, you’re probably a day late and a dollar short!

There’s no getting around it. Keyword research is a vitally important aspect of your search engine optimization campaign. If your site is targeting the wrong keywords, the search engines and your customers may never find you, resulting in lost dollars and meaningless rankings. By targeting the wrong keywords, you not only put valuable advertising dollars at risk, you are also throwing away all the time and energy you put into getting your site to rank for those terms to begin with. If you want to stay competitive, you can’t afford to do that. (bold added for emphasis) – Lisa Barone

To help you understand how I do keyword research, here’s a picture of a spreadsheet that I use to keep track of numbers.

Keyword Research Spreadsheet

There are three factors I look for:

1. Demand: if there isn’t any demand for a keyword phrase you think would be AWESOME, re-think your thinking!  Although you may refer to the product or service as “whatever”, others may never use that phrase at all.  Remember, the main objective behind effective keyword research is to find phrases that, if focused on, will get you quality search engine traffic.  I use the Google Adwords Tool for this research.
   No Demand = No Traffic
   No Traffic = No Sales
   No Sales = Get a JOB!
2. “Real” Competition: if you want more information on this, contact me!
3. Demand/Competition Ratio: this ratio is demand divided by competition times 100.  This gives each keyword phrase a “number”.  Many clients have asked what the target number should be for this ratio.  I haven’t really come up with one – my recommendation is to sort all the phrases by the ratio to see which ones have the best chance for success.

The final thing to take note of is that not all phrases, even if they have great demand and low “real” competition, are worth focusing on.  There are buyer phrases and there are browser phrases.  Generally, if people are looking for “Free _______” or “information on ________” they probably don’t have their credit card out ready to purchase.  If they are looking for a specific make and model of a product, this is a good indicator that they know what they want, and they’re ready to add money to my merchant account 😉

What experience have you had with keyword research?

UPDATE: the spreadsheet image is now a downloadable file! Check it out and start using it!

Sorry to my readers for the delay in blog posting.  I’ve been in Door County, Wisconsin doing business and visiting family for the last 2 weeks.

I realized, however, that taking a break from time to time can be a great rejuvination for an online marketer.

What do you all think?

As some of you may know, my 30th birthday was recently.  I knew my wife had something up her sleeve, but had NO IDEA what actually was going to happen.  Here are a few of the pics:

First, my wife through me a surprise party and brought a baseball cake.  My wife is notorious for giving away surprises on accident.  For my first birthday as a married guy, she blind folded me and drove me around in our car.  Then her cell phone rang and it was a friend from Wisconsin – she told the friend exactly what she was doing, where we were going, etc. while I was sitting right there 🙂  So, that she kept this surprise party on the low-down was a surprise in and of itself.

Second, the gift of all gifts – two tickets to the New York Yankess vs. Boston Red Sox baseball game at historic Yankee Stadium.  About 3 months ago, while watching Sportscenter, I called my Dad and told him how cool it would be to go to Yankee Stadium before they tore it down.  Our family have been avid Yankee fans, probably since my great grandpa came in to New York from Denmark way back when.  But we’d never been to Yankee stadium to see where the Babe, Lou, Yogi, Mickie, and the legends played the game.  These tickets were for August 27th at Yankee Stadium!  My dad and I were headed to New York City at midnight on the 26th!  Holy Cow!

While we were there, prior to the game, we saw where the David Letterman show was held (ate at a classic Italian pizza place next door).  We rode on the New York subways a ton, and then THE BIG GAME!  Unfortunately, the Yankees got their butts kicked by the rival Red Sox, but that we were there on my birthday to celebrate was enough for me.

So, thanks to my wonderful wife for the most memorable birthday party ever!

Nate Moller teaches how to start an online business for eCommerce using WordPress.

For some this may be old news, but on August 1, 2007 my PayPal Affiliate account in CJ.com was terminated. I hadn’t been using that affiliate much but noticed it today as I was trying to resolve a dispute with HostGator.com.

With further research, I found that PayPal has decided to do their own affiliate program.

Each time a new merchant signs up for a PayPal Business or Premier account via the link or banner that you provide, you’ll be eligible for a Merchant Referral Bonus. Your referral bonus is tied to the amount the merchant receives via PayPal’s Website Payment Tools or Send Money.

You’ll immediately start earning 0.5% of the new merchant’s revenue — up to $1,000.00 USD — for the first 12 months that the merchant has his PayPal account.

Note: The Merchant Referral Bonus program is designed to reward referrals of non-eBay merchants. As a result, payments received for eBay items will not contribute toward the Merchant Referral Bonus.

Does anyone know why they decided to go this route?

Here are some of my thoughts:

1) Cost Effectiveness: I know it costs a pretty good chunk of change to be an advertiser with CJ.com.
2) More Direct Control: As PayPal uses their own code and own resources, they have more control over what happens with their accounts.
3) Increased Bottom Line & Link Building: I’ve been reading a lot lately about affiliate programs and why they can be a great resource for your own eCommerce business. Not only are you motivating others to sell your product, but you are also building direct links to your site on other quality sites. It’s called “link love”!

So, although i may be a day late and a dollar short on this discovery, I thought readers would like to know that PayPal has their own affiliate program now.

Comments welcome!